What is Ethical behavior?
- Ethical behavior is doing things that are morally right.
Ethically responsible companies want to do the right thing in areas such as:
1- Employment and community : to pay attention to things that affect all people, not just their employees, in the areas where the company has its offices, factories and activities.
2- The environment : to conduct business in ways that protect the environment
3- Winning new business : they want to get business without engaging in corrupt behavior, for example offering scraps
4- Accountability and transparency
Ethical corporate behavior includes accountability ; the idea that companies are completely responsible for what they do and that people should be able to expect them to explain their actions. Transparency is explaining this behavior in a way that can be understood by outsiders, and not trying to hide anything
5- Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a business's concern for society's welfare. This means that marketing managers are interested in long-term corporate interests and also society's health.
Business across cultures
Company or corporate culture : the way a particular company works, and the things it believes are important;
Canteen culture : the ways that people in an organization such as the police think and talk, not approved by the leaders of an organization;
Long-hours culture : where people are expected to work for a long time each day;
macho culture : ideas typically associated with men: physical strength, aggressiveness, etc.
Distance and familiarity
| In Country A: |
In Country B: |
|
|---|---|---|
| Managers are usually |
Easy to talk to – accessible and approachable. |
more distant and remote. |
| Employees May feel quiet |
There is a tradition of employees being involved in decision-making as part of a team of equals. |
Distant from their managers and have a lot of deference for them: accepting decisions but not participating in them. |
| |
This company is not very hierarchical, with only three management layers. |
Companies in Country B tend to be more hierarchical than those in Country A, with more management layers. |
Defense and distance may be shown in language. Some languages have many forms of address that you use to indicate how familiar you are with someone. English only has one form, “you”, but distance may be shown in other ways, for example, in whether first names or surnames are used.
Names
In the English-speaking business world, people use first names, even with people you do not know very well. But if you aren't sure, use Mr and the family name for men, and Mrs or Miss and the family name for women, depending on whether they are married or not.Ms often replaces Mrs or Miss. You don't use Mr, Mrs, Miss or Ms with only a first name or by itself.
Here are some examples:
- Tom Brewster, Marketing Director
“Tom” is the first name and “Brewster” is the family name or surname.
"My real name's Thomas, but please call me Tom" - JG Cutler, Tax Inspector
(JG – initials) - Gouglas R. Baxendale Jr, Chief Executive Officer
(R. – initial. I'm from the US. The “R” stands for Robert - that's my middle name. My dad is also called Douglas R. Baxendale, so he puts “Sr "(senior) after his name, and I put Jr (junior). This is unusual in the UK.) - JAMES CASSIGY, Sales Director
(Sales Director - a job title) - E) KAREN A. ESPOSITO, BS, CPA
(CPA – qualifications – Certified Public Senior Partner Accountant)
dress
Example: Types of Dress allowed in different companies
In Alphalan business people dress quite formally. The business suit is common, but for men, wearing non-matching jacket and trousers is also a possibility.
In Betatania , the dark business suit is obligatory for men. Some companies allow women to wear trouser suits.
In Gammaria , the business suit is also as necessary as in Betatania, but with more variation in colors. Some companies require employees to wear formal clothes from Monday to Thursday, and allow less formal ones on what they call casual Fridays or dress-down Fridays.In some places, many banks and shops require people dealing with customers to wear uniforms, so that they all dress the same.
In Deltatonia , people dress more casually at work than in the other countries. For men suits and ties are less common than elsewhere.This is smart casual.
Entertainment and hospitality.
Entertaining and hospitality vary a lot in different cultures.
1. In Alphaland , entertaining is important. These are long business lunches in restaurants, where deals are discussed. Professional and private lives are separate, and clients are never invited home.
2. In Betatania , evenings are spent drinking and singing in bars with colleagues and clients.
3. In Gammaria , lunch can be important, but less so than in Alphaland. Important contacts may be invited to dinner at home. Corporate hospitality is a big industry, with clients invited to big sports event.
4. In Deltatonia , restaurants are rare outside the capital. Some entertainment takes place when important clients are invited to people's houses for dinner, or go sailing or to the country houses for the weekend, etc.
Time
Attitudes towards time can vary enormously from one company's culture to another.
Example: In Busyville.
- People start work at eight. And officially finish at six, though many managers stay much longer. There is a culture of presenteeism People start work at eight. And officially finish at six, though many managers stay much longer.There is a culture of presenteeism: being at work when you don't need to be.
- There is a two-hour lunch break, and a lot of business is done over restaurant lunches.(Lunch is the main meal. The working breakfast is rare.) There are no snacks between meals, just coffee, so eat properly at meal times.
- As for punctuality, you can arrive up to 15 minutes “late” for meetings. If invited to someone's house (unusual in business), arrive 15-30 minutes after the time given.
- Don't phone people at home about work, and don't phone them at all after 9pm.
- There are a lot of public holidays (about 15) during the year. Busyville is empty in August, as many companies close completely for four weeks. Employees have five weeks' holiday a year and they usually take four of them in August.
cross cultural communication
Here are some other areas of potential misunderstanding:
Distance Distance: when talking to people what is comfortable?
eye contact Eye contact: how much of the time do people look directly at each other?
gesture Gesture: do people make lots of facial gestures? How much do they move their arms and hands?
Greetings/goodbyes: Greetings/goodbyes: do people shake hands ever time? Are there fixed phrases to say?
Humor Humor: is this a good way of relaxing people? Or is it out of place in some Contexts?
Physical contact Physical contact: how much do people touch each other?
Presents Presents: when should you give them? When should you open them? What should you say when you receive one?
EXERCISES + ANSWERS
Exercise 2. Read the article relating to the ideas in Exercise 1. Then say if the statements below are true or false, identifying the phrase or sentence from the article that confirms your answer:
How to become good in all areas
Few companies are clear about how to manage what can be an amorphous collection of internal initiatives and external relationships on social, environmental and ethical issues.
Probity and responsibility must be embedded in a company's culture, strategy and operations from the top down. But how can this be done? A new guide from Business for Social Responsibility, a US non-profit research and advisory organization with 1,400 member companies and affiliates, attempts to answer this by taking the reader step by step their strategy and operations. Its combined annual revenue of nearly $2,000 bn
(£1,300bn) and employs 6m people. They include ABB, British Airways, Coca-Cola, Ikea, Unilever and Walmart. The scandals in the US have underlined how “corporate responsibility taskforces” and codes of conduct are not enough on their own and can
Creating and building a successful CSR management system is a complex, long-term project for any company,” says the report. “It involves a shift in the way a company conducts business and can be liked to implementing other large-scale change initiatives such as total quality management.” The guide runs through basics such as who currently has responsibility for CSR in the company, why a better
management structure might improve things and what “hotbutton”
1. Most companies have clear, coherent policies on social, environmental and ethical
2. If a company behaves with probity, it has high ethical standards.
3. Business for Social Responsibility has a coherent approach to designing a
4. It's simple for a company to add a CSR management system to its day-to-day
5. Codes of conduct are enough to ensure ethical behavior.
6. The guide says that a company's stakeholders should all be kept happy so that they
Exercise 3. Complete the sentences, with expressions from the text above:
1. The company was accused of giving ................................ to local officials in order
2. The company has supported several projects in the local ..................................
3. Voters demanded that there should be greater ................................ in the election
4. Following the scandals of Enron, Worldcom and others, there is greater emphasis
in business schools on the teaching of ………………………
Exercise 7. Look at Exercise 6. Which word combination with 'culture' describes each of the following?
1. The men really dominate in this company, they don't make life easy for women at all. All they talk about is soccer.
2. Among the management here we try to be fair to people from different minorities, but there are still elements of racism among the workforce.
3. Of course, the quality of the work you do after you've been at it for ten hours is not good.
4. There was a time when managers could only wear white shirts in this company - things are a bit less formal now.
5. Here, the male managers talk about the market as if it was some kind of battlefield.
6. They say that if you go home at 5.30, you can't be doing your job properly, but I'm going anyway.
Exercise 10. Tick (✔) the things this visitor to Busyville does right, and put a cross (X) by her mistakes:
In Busyville, people start work at eight, and officially finish at six, though many managers stay much longer. There is a culture of presenteeism: being at work when you don't need to be. There is a two-hour lunch break, and a lot of business is done over restaurant lunches. (Lunch is the main meal. The working breakfast is rare.) There are no snacks between meals, just coffee, so eat properly at meal times. As for punctuality, you can arrive up to 15 minutes 'late' for meetings. If invited to someone's house (unusual in business), arrive 15-30 minutes after the time given. Busyville is empty in August, as many companies close completely for four weeks.Don't phone people at home about work, and don't phone them at all after 9 pm. There are a lot of public holidays (about 15) during the year.
I phoned my contact in her office at 7.30 pm. (1…) I suggest a working breakfast the next morning. (2…) She wasn't keen, so I suggested lunch. (3…) We arranged to meet at her office at 12.30. I arrived at 12.45 (4…) and we went to a restaurant, where we had a very good discussion. That evening I wanted to check something, so I found her name in the phone book and phoned her at home. (5…) She was less friendly than at lunchtime. I said I would be back in Busyville in mid-August (6…). Not a good time, she said, so I suggested September. (7…)
